1.5.5-Frauleindrosselmeyer
Archivist's note: This write-up was posted several months after the other commentary. Brick!Club 1.5.5-9 - Javert, the Cart, Fantine loses her job and slowly but surely the Bucket family began to starve In no particular order: RELIGIOUS PARALLELS WHICH AREN’T TO DO WITH THIS CHAPTER BUT JUST IN GENERAL So if we do divide Les Mis into Before Amis and Anno Amis, can we run with this and make them Old and New Testaments? Can Chapter Petit-Gervais be the Israelites in the desert receiving the Covenant? Is the nunnery the Israelites in exile? (Though that would make the convent Babylon, so erk) Is this a really loose metaphor which could work, but I just bolloxed it by overreaching? (Yes) '''Fantine I was about to think “Fantine, you colossal pillock, why not just LIE and say Cosette’s your poor dead sister’s child or whatever,” but then NO. Because my headcanon is that all she wants is a family, and in her head leaving her child halfway across the country with strangers is better than being together with her and calling her some other relation. Calling her not-daughter would be the biggest betrayal of Fantine’s desire for a family and a daughter to love, would be abandoning her far more than lodging her with the Thenardiers is. Poor, poor, impractical Fantine <3. Also we keep hearing about her hair and teeth, which is the Hugo equivalent of when you’re watching TV and the entire “Previously on…” is devoted to a character we haven’t heard from for a while and who hasn’t done anything recently which is worthy of being in the “Previously on…”; you know her hair and teeth are going to be killed off just before the credits… "She no longer felt strong enough to say a word. She was advised to see the mayor; she did not dare. The mayor had given her fifty francs because he was good, and had dismissed her because he was just. She bowed before the decision." Always nice to see historical internalised slut-shaming. And by “always nice,” I mean why is this still a thing why does this feel so contemporary jfc this isn’t '''fair "The householder, whom she owed for her rent, said to her, "You are young and pretty; you can pay."" DIES IRAE DIES ILLAE '''The Cart So all the villagers tried pulling Fauchelevent out, but they were incapable of working collectively (or effectively) until Madeleine organised them. Are we supposed to definitely know he is Valjean after Javert’s weirdly timed I Know What You Did Last Summer moment? Would readers have known? This metaphor for society crushing the working man (which, in glorious Hugo fashion, is about as subtle as a cart to the chest) is potentially adding evidence to my Hugo-as-problematic-w/r/t-paternalism theory :-( IDK I mean it might not be a metaphor? But surely heavy things fell on people ALL THE TIME back then, there were carts in the streets and factories full of machines and cotton gins waiting for people to fall into them, and surely people would have come up with some kind of system for lifting the heavy things off people? I mean, a jack and/or Monsieur-le-Hulk Madeljean are not complex pieces of machinery, it’s not a terribly difficult thing to coordinate Everyone Lift On Three. But then Hugo NPCs villagers seem to do very little except gossip and descend into casual neglectabuse of outsiders when left to their own devices. Maybe all the ones with initiative got out to become evil innkeepers, leaving the proles as directionless drones? I guess we need the cart scene so Javert (and possibly the 1800s reader) can have their DUN DUN DUN IT’S VALJEAN moment! The only other option would be, like, Javert creepering on Madeleine taking a bath and seeing the brand, or something? I don’t even slightly ship it and ‘Valvert’ sounds like ‘vulva’ anyway so okay, Hugo, fine, have your Cart Of Industrialisation, whatever, I don’t even know what point I had about it any more so I’m just going to pretend the cart is just a cart and the villagers are just dim. '''DAEMON FIC DAEMON FIC there can never be enough daemon fic, it is literally my favourite AU and I always had a problem with Pullman '''saying daemons ‘settle,’ because people should always keep changing throughout their lives, and Hugo agrees with me okay I think I need to write some fic now Mme Victurnien "At the Restoration she had turned bigot, and that with so much energy that the priests had forgiven her her monk." I like that her evilness is a survival mechanism which is rewarded by society. I like that she’s a self-righteous horror as a coping mechanism. I hate her. Which brings me to… '''Javert (this bit is a weird personal idiosyncratic reaction) I am pleased there is chat about his ridiculous creepering and his dressing like a cartoon spy and being seven different types of animal, because I am so terrified of Javert and what he stands for since the age of four, you have no idea. I totally get where he’s coming from with his black-and-white morality and general judgey douchitude, I knew people like this, he is why I have to frequently remind myself that Religious People Are Not All Mean And Waiting To Ostracise You and Judge You And Hate You and Be Disgusted By You, and understanding why he is the way he is doesn’t make him less bloody harmful. I always feel relieved when he tips himself into the Seine, which is not my usual reaction to onscreen suicide (i.e. mild hysteria). (I am a bad human, I’m really sorry about this, Religious People, I’m not intellectually scared of you, I’m working on it, I swear) Commentary '''Serrende The way I got it, the cart was in an unusually precarious off-balance position, and moving it almost any which way ran a severe risk of crushing poor Fauchelevent all the same. That was why someone unusually strong needed to get under the cart along with him, otherwise none of the rest of the lifting would work. True, it might seem odd that it was Valjean that saw this, but if so I would say it’s less because he reads a lot/is more enlightened generally, but more because of the tons of heavy lifting under dangerous conditions he did as a convict in Toulon. So if it’s paternalism - and certainly much of M. Madeleine is of a very benevolent paternalism, even as it ultimately fails - at least it comes from a different source this time: not education but hard work as an outcast of society. I don’t think the villagers are all meant to be proles? They’re townsfolk, which means both workers, bourgeois, and various people “in between”. To me at least, though it may just be conjecture, the bourgeois people of the town seem especially prevalent in the mentions of general gossip, especially when there’s all the speculation about what kind of person M. Madeleine is. It’s not the poor who try to invite him to social gatherings and such… Pilferingapples I love your commentary and wish to give it cookies.Although if we’re drawing Bible parallels I think we’ve got a fistfight for Analogous Messiah in A.A. section. SO MANY OPTIONS but I’ll leave that debate for the people who get such things.And the section itself. ANYWAY MOVING ON! “Also we keep hearing about her hair and teeth, which is the Hugo equivalent of when you’re watching TV and the entire “Previously on…” is devoted to a character we haven’t heard from for a while and who hasn’t done anything recently which is worthy of being in the “Previously on…”; you know her hair and teeth are going to be killed off just before the credits…” This is brilliant and hilarious and regrettably not entirely accurate. Hugo..Hugo LIKES talking about his pretty blondes. But yeah, the teeth and hair, the dowry metaphors, if you want to look back through the tag there are REASONS TO FLAIL. THE CART OF INDUSTRIALISATION THOUGH! If you’re right! That’s a brilliant metaphor, because it’s arguably only there Because Madejean, and his factory! So running with that, is it representing the responsibility of the industrialist to make sure any burdens incurred in their own success do not fall on the preexisting artisans? (No, Pilf, shut up, you don’t Know Things.) Anyway PLEASE KEEP WRITING THE COMMENTARY IT IS FUN AND I WANT TO READ IT (why the readmores, though? You are not EVEN the longest-windediest person around here.)